MercadoLibre (MELI) Stock: One Analyst Sees 72% Upside From Here – Here’s Why

TLDR

• Bank of America reiterated a Buy rating on MELI with a $2,400 price target
• MELI’s credit card portfolio more than doubled YoY in Q1 2026 to $6.6 billion, now 45% of total loan book
• BofA expects the credit card segment to post an EBIT loss of $443M in 2026 before reaching breakeven in 2028 and $1.5B profit by 2030
• MELI stock is down 34.5% YTD vs. the S&P 500’s 24% gain, but 85% of analysts rate it a Buy
• Scotiabank’s Hector Maya has the street-high target of $2,800 — a 72% premium to current prices

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MercadoLibre stock is trading around $1,622 as of June 9, 2026, down roughly 34.5% year-to-date while the S&P 500 has climbed 24%.

MercadoLibre, Inc., MELI

Despite the gap, Wall Street isn’t walking away. Eighty-five percent of analysts covering the stock have a Buy rating, and not a single analyst has a price target below today’s price.

Bank of America Securities reiterated its Buy rating this week, keeping a $2,400 price target in place. Analyst Robert E. Ford Aguilar pointed to the company’s growing credit card business as the main driver of long-term value, even as it weighs on near-term margins.

MercadoLibre’s credit card portfolio more than doubled year-over-year in Q1 2026, reaching $6.6 billion. That now represents approximately 45% of the company’s total loan book.

Credit card monthly active users rose 68% in the same period, well ahead of overall Mercado Pago MAU growth of 29%. That’s a fast-moving segment by any measure.

Still, BofA expects the credit card unit to post an EBIT loss of $443 million in 2026. That’s a 1.1 percentage point drag on consolidated margin. Credit card businesses typically take 12 to 18 months to reach net interest margin breakeven after launch due to upfront provisioning costs.

The firm projects the segment hits breakeven in 2028, then generates $1.5 billion in EBIT by 2030. That would add 2.2 percentage points to consolidated margin from 2026 levels.

Market Position Still Thin — And That’s the Opportunity

Despite the rapid credit card growth, MercadoLibre held just 3.4% of industry credit card balances in Brazil and 2.5% in Mexico as of March 2026. There’s a lot of room to run.

The company also launched its credit card in Argentina, where it has 19.9 million daily active Pago app users — more than the 12.9 million it has in Brazil. BofA’s Aguilar noted lower customer acquisition costs and a stronger brand position there should accelerate the portfolio ramp-up as Argentina’s inflation continues to ease.

Argentina’s historically low credit penetration, driven by years of macroeconomic instability, means the market is essentially untapped.

Growth Numbers That Are Hard to Dismiss

Zooming out, MELI’s broader business has compounded at 31% annually over the past decade. Total credit users grew from 10 million in 2022 to 41.9 million as of Q1 2026. The total credit portfolio expanded from $2.8 billion to $14.6 billion over that same stretch.

E-commerce penetration in Latin America sits at just 14%, compared to 27% in the U.S. and 32% in China. The total addressable market is estimated at $5.5 trillion, against trailing 12-month revenue of $31.8 billion.

Buyers active in at least three categories grew 130% from 2022 through Q1 2026. Average quarterly purchase frequency rose from 6.8 to 9 over the same period.

The street-high price target belongs to Scotiabank’s Hector Maya at $2,800 — a 72% premium to current levels, though it was actually a cut from a prior target of $3,500.

BofA values the stock using a sum-of-the-parts model: commerce at 0.6x 2027 gross merchandise value and fintech at 0.2x 2027 off-platform total payments value, arriving at the $2,400 target.